Bill and Toni Cooley are a father-and-daughter team that own and operate several companies

The father-and-daughter team of Bill and Toni Cooley own and operate several companies.

“Getting into the game and believing you can be a player is 99.9 percent of achieving success,” says Toni Cooley, cofounder and president of Madison-based Systems Electro Coating LLC, a tier-one supplier to Nissan and Toyota.

“I learned that from Doc,” she says, nodding toward her dad, who with her owns and operates two other Jackson-based businesses, Systems Consultants Associates and Systems IT.

“Notice that the word ‘systems’ is in the names of all our companies,” said Bill Cooley, former dean of the School of Business at Jackson State University. “Whether it’s a church or the automotive industry, everything is a system, and your degree of success depends upon the degree to which you understand the system in which you are operating.”

Cooley founded Systems Consultants Associates in 1977 largely to advise people in the minority community on how to integrate principles of business into their enterprises. In 1994, Toni Cooley traded in her position as a lawyer in contract administration with Turner International in Atlanta for a role in the family-owned consulting firm. Together, they transformed this sideline of his into a thriving firm with nine-digit annual revenues.

While on a consulting assignment for the Mississippi Development Authority, Bill Cooley overheard a Nissan executive talk about the need for an instrument to select minority-owned businesses as suppliers for the Canton plant. Cooley on his own developed such a tool, which Nissan used. The automaker also tapped the Cooleys’ company for a joint venture with PPG to rust proof the frames for its trucks and SUVs. The Cooley family owns 81 percent of that venture, and all but one of the 60-plus employees are Systems Electro hires.

Toni Cooley discovered in the process how costly equipment breakdowns can be. One happened at Systems Electro in 2003 that shut the Nissan plant down for 106 minutes and led to the supplier being fined $249,000.

The recession also took its toll. “We started with pay cuts for senior management and elimination of distributions and bonus plans,” Toni Cooley said. “Eventually, we had to lay off people, but Nissan is manufacturing more vehicles now, and we have rehired everybody who was available to come back.”

In 2011, Toni Cooley formed a joint venture with Japanese-based Toyota Boshoku, Systems Automotive Interiors, to make seats for all Toyotas made in Mississippi.

Here are some of the Cooleys’ reflections on their success:

Q: Who were the influential people in your lives?

Bill: Young folks. I ws in the Air Force for 21 years, and the crazy young guys would take chances, and as a result, I became more daring.

Toni: Doc (her father) and my mother, Lillian Cooley, who was the librarian at Millsaps College for a number of years. Both have a strong work ethic and commitment to service.

Q: What were your first jobs?

Bill: You mean after picking cotton? One summer as an undergraduate a friend and I decided to sell sandwiches to people working in the fields around Hollandale, but we discovered they had no money to buy them. That’s the first lesson for entrepreneurs, and I still ask the question, “Who’s going to pay?”

Toni: After graduating from Stephens College, I volunteered for Mississippi Rep. Robert Clark’s campaign and then worked for seven years in U.S. Rep. Wayne Dowdy’s office in Washington, D.C., before going to law school.

Q: What motivates you as entrepreneurs?

Bill: Making money is real low on our totem pole. We’re interested in training young African Americans for managerial positions and in meeting payroll. Just as important as capacity building, however, are the spinoffs that develop in the community.

Toni: Mississippi has a lot of need, but we also have a lot of talent. What we do gives us an opportunity to showcase the young people who do have talent.

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Toni: Think big. I never thought that a small company in west Jackson would supply products to automotive manufacturers like Nissan and Toyota. You can do almost anything if you work hard, learn, do your homework and get in the game.

Bill: You must be a risk seeker. You can hire innovative and creative people, but the entrepreneur must be willing to toss the dice and take a chance on what you think will work. Then get a good night’s sleep and wake up fighting to make it happen.

Toni: The unsolicited tool that Doc created for Nissan to assess potential minority business suppliers is a fabulous lesson in listening to the need of a customer, then fulfilling that need. Look at everybody as a potential customer.

Excerpt from “Mississippi Entrepreneurs” by Polly Dement. Published by Cat Island Books, distributed by University Press of Mississippi.

This is the seventh in a weekly series of excerpts from “Mississippi Entrepreneurs” by Polly Dement.